Individuals and businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on communication networks to send and receive information. For example, individuals may utilize communication networks for voice communications, research, and entertainment, and organizations typically require the use of high speed data networks such as the Internet for conducting critical business transactions.
Several methods of communication over communication networks are possible. For example, users may communicate via traditional voice calls, email, short message service (SMS) text messages, multimedia message service (MMS) messages, instant messaging (IM), push-to-talk (PTT), and various other communication techniques. Under traditional delivery methods, messages in a technology-specific service are typically transferred between respective nodes that are specific to that message service. For example, a sender transfers an email message to an email node serving the sender's email account, which in turn transfers the email message for delivery to another email node serving the recipient's email account. In this manner, the recipient receives the email message transferred from the sender in his or her inbox, which is typically a client application that downloads the email message from the email node serving the recipient's email account. Other communication services typically transfer messages in a similar manner, but operate as separate and distinct services that utilize different technology-specific service nodes.